“Mobile-centric” news consumers want continuous access, aggregation

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Summary

Michael Lamb, principal of McKinsey & Company, delivered a “fundamentally optimistic” message Tuesday, saying that despite the exponential popularity of mobile news consumption, efforts to build desktop audiences have not been all for naught. He said that companies’ business models are still relevant and can be used to adapt to the growing mobile audience. He said that winning this audience requires steps borrowed from “mobile natives,” including a new approach to product development, new distribution, pricing and stronger marketing.

Quotes

“Mobile is going to take our audiences, it’s going to fragment them again, and it’s going to put us back to step one.” - Michael Lamb

“Your brands are relevant, your business models and your newest business models are relevant, and we can borrow from the digital natives to build a playbook,” - Michael Lamb

“SEO and SEM are no less important than they ever were, but they will not, by themselves, win you this mobile game. You need to get in front of the mobile consumer at the moments where they’re making decisions about their mobile experience,” - Michael Lamb

Bullet Points

Mobile news today is a very small part of total consumption.

Brands without a strong mobile foothold can adapt current business models to become more mobile-friendly.

Tweets

Media

McKinsey & Company's Principal Michael Lamb presents to the INMA World Congress a speech over winning the aggregation use case.

Speaker Info

Based in New York, Michael Lamb works across the spectrum of media, telecom, and entertainment companies in North America.

Among other initiatives, he has designed a new offer portfolio for a US mobile virtual network operator, developed an acquisition and cross-sell strategy for a leading cable operator, identified and piloted marketing and sales improvement tactics for an incumbent print-directories publisher; and improved the customer-targeting and segmentation-marketing capabilities of an Internet Service Provider in the US.

Michael has also developed the tools and capabilities for multi-product prospecting for a large US direct-mail business, identified and propagated best practices in sponsorship sales and media-rights negotiation for a US professional sports league, and worked with six major sports franchises to apply an analytic approach to ticket pricing.

Some might say that the explosion of mobile news consumption has made numerous years of effort to build desktop audiences all for naught. But Michael Lamb, principal, McKinsey & Company, is optimistic about the future.

“First the reality: mobile today is a very small part of news consumption,” Lamb said during his presentation at the the INMA 2013 World Congress on Tuesday.

Based on McKinsey’s annual survey of average time spent consuming news and how it is consumed, only 2% of those surveyed consumed news through a mobile platform. This allows media companies time to retool their news experiences.

The same study estimated there are close to 15 million “mobile-centric” news consumers.

Mobile-centric news consumers tend to be younger consumers. They have different needs than digital non-mobile users, Lamb said.

Thankfully, what they want is easy to identify. They want to have news everywhere they go. They want news fast and check news continuously throughout the day.

“They want timeliness, even more so than the ravenous news consumers we’ve gotten used to in the desktop environment,” Lamb said.

Design, or how information is presented, is also much more important to mobile-centric consumers, with 56% of mobile consumers saying it was important. Only 36% of digital non-mobile news consumers say design is important.

Video, customisable experiences, and personalisation also are preferred for mobile news consumers: “It means ceding to the consumer a certain amount of control,” Lamb said.

The social aspect plays a large role in mobile news. More than 40% of mobile news consumers surveyed said they read news to be able to comment on it with others.

“These are the folks driving the sharing, driving the commenting, driving the social activity around news,” he said.

There is much to learn from the mobile-centric consumer, Lamb said. New theories of distribution need to emerge, new marketing tools to attract paying customers need to be created, and new price points need to be set.

“We’re going to need new price models to tempt this next generation,” he said.

While mobile is fast on the rise, Lamb said companies still have time to adapt.

“The hype is real — mobile is coming The mobile-centric consumer is on his way. They’ve been clear about what they want. There are a host of folks out there doing the experimentation for you about these experiences, and we should borrow aggressively from their experiences and from their approach.

“And we should be proud of the assets and confident in the position that we bring to attack this opportunity with your brands and your content.”